Coming Up For Airklok
by Citizenjess
Summary: "First come the phone calls." Abigail deals with the fallout of "Going Downklok." Spoilers through "Dethdinner."


Summary: "First come the phone calls." Abigail deals with the fallout of "Going Downklok." Spoilers through "Dethdinner." Rated PG-13 for language, sexual harassment. Credit for Abigail's love of Suzy Fattits goes to xelias. It's fanon, pass it on!

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**Coming Up For Airklok**

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1.

First come the phone calls. Abigail wouldn't have taken Nathan Explosion for a texter, but his written correspondences supplement lengthy voice mail messages that she suspects have a lot to do with alcohol. "Heeey, Abigail, it's me, uh, Nathan. Uh, Nathan Explosion. You know, from Dethklok. How are you? I'm just like, sittin' here, eatin' some chips. D'you like chips? Oh wait, you're like, vegan or something. Can vegans eat chips? Can they eat anything?"

"Hi Abigail, it's Nathan again. I was passing by Charles' office and he had you on speaker phone. I'm sorry you had to hang up really fast all of the sudden 'cause your cat was on fire. I hope Chairman Meow is okay, little rascally goofball. Smoking's bad for you, by the way."

"Abigail, hey, did you get the flowers I sent you? I hope you like black roses. They're pretty brutal, right? Also, the get-well card is for Chairman Meow. I know he can't, um, read very well, so I don't mind if you look at what I wrote to him."

"Abigaiiil, with hair like … kale … my heart's in jail over youuu … no, that's fucking stupid. Sorry, let me start again …"

Abigail hits "Delete" before listening to Nathan's remaining five messages of the night, three of them involving singing. "if u think about it 2 people vowing 2 stay w each other 4 all eternity is pretty fukin brutal," his most recent text reads, and Abigail lets out an annoyed, _God_" before shutting her phone down completely. She sinks almost entirely into the girlishly scented bath water with an appreciative groan and closes her eyes.

2.

She already knew quite a lot about the band before taking the assignment, of course. After all, while her job at Crystal Mountain Records was pretty new, her interest in music and metal were not. She was also hardly a stranger to unwanted male attention. She played the game because she had to – "look like a woman, but act like a man, and for God's sake, never let them see you cry," her business school mentor used to say – but it was nonplussing how transparent most men, professional and otherwise, turned out to be.

Still, it was Dethklok, and Charles Foster Ofdensen didn't have the same smarmy creep factor that countless other managers did. It put Abigail cautiously at ease. In particular, she liked that Charles was frank about the nature of the business. "Unfortunately, the boys don't trust a lot of record executives. I shudder to think who would be handling them today if Roy Cornickelson hadn't retained control of his company. They, ah, aren't particularly fond of his son."

'Ah, yes,' Abigail thought, and her mind settled on a particularly unpleasant image. Crystal Mountain's holiday party last December. '_Damian_.' "I broke his nose once," she volunteered. "But if anyone asks, he tells them he fell down the stairs."

Charles' pleasantly placid face expressed rare appreciation. "I think you're going to fit in just fine here, Miss, uh, Remeltindtdrinc." He extended his hand and Abigail shook it briefly.

"Please, just Abigail is fine," she insisted. She watched Charles scribble something inside of a file containing her resume and then shut it. "So when do I meet the band?" she asked.

"Right now," Charles said, and stood suddenly, brushing invisible dust from his suit. "Come with me," he added, and she did.

3.

The locket containing a strand of dark hair and what she can only hope is someone else's foreskin is the last straw. "Nathan, it's Abigail," she says crisply, a bit surprised that, for all his stalking efforts, her own call to him goes to voice mail. "We need to talk. In person. Set up a time and place through Charles, and I'll see you there." She pauses. "This is not a date, by the way."

4.

She'd waited until the next day to pull Charles aside; his own makeshift office in the sub was small and sparse, but comfortable enough. "Something happened the other night. Between Nathan and I," Abigail began.

Charles nodded perceptively. Weeks ago, he'd told her to let him know whether any of the guys bothered her. Aside from the recent tension between herself and Pickles, she felt as though she'd put an effective hamper on any advances. With Toki, she had suffered a slightly too-long hug after rebuffing him, and then he'd tottered away to "dos laundrys." Skwisgaar had responded well enough to a simple "no." Murderface, on the other hand, had not. Still, her foot hadn't hit him _that_ hard; his right testicle would probably even drop again someday.

The Pickles thing had been a bit more awkward; and then, too soon to completely save face, Nathan had just been there, wanting her. He'd been working out a lot in lieu of near-constant masturbation, and there had been a lot of pheromones floating around that fucking ship. He'd acquiesced pretty quickly to pleasing her, and the combination of repressed adolescent fantasies about banging long-haired metal gods and the fact that she had been on a sort of self-imposed vibrator embargo for the past few days while they put in endless hours on the album meant that the whole thing was over before it had really begun.

Still, after giving a sanitized version of the tale to Charles, she acknowledged her role in upping the awkwardness of an already weird situation. "Recording will be finished this week for sure," she said, and he nodded, fingers steepled in front of his face. "I'll take off as soon as we surface again."

"Of course, if you're sure." Charles Ofdensen didn't do simpering, but his words were consoling nonetheless. "You've done excellent work here. I'm sorry to see you go." She heard a drawer opening, and then Charles was setting a glass in front of her. "Brandy?" he offered, and she sighed gratefully.

Later, she would spend a sleepless night in her cabin, hunkered down in a faded, knee-length Suzy Fattits & the Razor Clan t-shirt from college, reading an eBook and trying not to think about how it had felt between her legs when Nathan had gone down on her. She finally fell asleep at 5 AM and had only one dream that she remembered. In it, she was in the middle of masturbating, vibrator whirring softly, head thrown back, lips parted, when Nathan suddenly appeared in her doorway. "Need a hand?" he grinned at her. When Abigail woke up, she checked three times to make sure her door was locked, and then put a chair in front of it just in case.

5.

Nathan chooses some ridiculously overpriced French restaurant and a late dinner for their meeting, and Abigail successfully downgrades it to a bistro and mid-afternoon lunch. There would be lots of people around, and more of an opportunity to remind Nathan that, in fact, this is Not a Date.

"Hi," Nathan rumbles after they both arrive. They sit down across from one another and their knees bump a little. For a minute or two, Abigail isn't sure she'll be able to say what needs to be said, and then Nathan asks, "hey, so did you ever get that, uh, ter-ar-ee-um I sent you? That's not my skull it's made out of, by the way," he adds. "It's someone else's."

Abigail sighs. "I got it, Nathan. I also got the 37 text messages you've sent me since the beginning of the week, all of the phone calls, the 'Nathan Hearts Abigail' page invitation on FaceFriends …"

"It already has half a million fans. By the way, the most popular name for our first-born child right now is Lucyfer. With a 'y,' 'cause that's stylish right now or something."

Abigail sighs, never so grateful as when the waiter interrupts Nathan's painful conversation-making ("I think Vageena is kind of pretty …") to take their orders. "Look, Nathan," she starts up again a moment later. "We're not dating. We hardly even know each other. Some … stuff happened during those recording sessions on the ship -"

"Yeah, I uh, went down there," Nathan intones, and then smirks. "You liked it, huh? Didn't you? Come oooon. Abigail. Abigail, come on."

Abigail pinches her brow. "It wasn't awful," she admits, and then when Nathan begins to look smug, pounds her fist on the table, making him and some other restaurant patrons jump. "That's not the point. _Damn_ it, Nathan, you've been stalking me after one very accidental sexual encounter. You've made me really uncomfortable, do you even get that? I can't even masturbate normally anymore."

"Okay, that's weird," Nathan mutters.

"_You're_ weird!" Abigail shoots back. "Where do you get off thinking we're dating or that you should plan what to name our future children? Where do you get your nerve?"

"Um, I don't know." Nathan's shoulders are a little hunched now. "I, um, I didn't mean to make you feel bad," he mumbles, and it sounds sincere. "I just liked you, and usually, girls like me back. You know, 'cause -"

"Because you're Nathan Explosion," Abigail interrupts tiredly.

Nathan brightens. "From Dethklok, yeah." He sobers again. "But uh, I'm sorry. I hope we can still like, be friends. But maybe not the kind that sends animal body part jewelry to each other. 'Cept on special occasions, maybe. Like funerals."

"The squirrel feet earrings were a bit much." Her eyes meet Nathan's hopeful gaze, and she concedes. "Friends," she agrees, and shakes Nathan's meaty proffered hand.

6.

That night, she's back on the sub again in her dreams. Splayed atop her cot, moaning in self-pleasure, she is once again interrupted by Nathan, who smiles crookedly at her. "I really like your Vageena," he rumbles. "Hey, look, I've got squirrel feet," he says excitedly, and Abigail wakes up screaming. Atop her nightstand, next to her alarm clock, the red digits restlessly ticking by the 3 o'clock hour, sits her vibrator. It taunts her in Nathan's voice: "_Abigail, with hair like kale … come on. Come ooonnn. Abigail. Come ooonnn, Abigail."_

"God _damn it_," she yells and swipes everything off of her nightstand with an exasperated wave of her arm. Her vibrator rolls a couple of feet underneath the bed and stays there until Chairman Meow accidentally turns it on and wakes her up by yowling and jumping on her face.


End file.
